World of Warcraft Raids, Questing, and More Panel

On day two of BlizzCon 2013, Blizzard is going deeper into Warlords of Draenor by having a panel about all the nuanced elements of World of Warcraft: raids, questing, gameplay, and even more. This panel is exactly what WoW players have been looking for and we're liveblogging it all. Get ready.

BlizzCon Contests

Liveblog

Raids

It will have 10 bosses with 3-wings, it will be non-linear like Ulduar was. They feel like raids feel more organic and more epic when they are able to give people choices.

The goal is to dismantle the foundry, tear down the Iron Horde, and face off against Warlord Blackhand.

They are hoping that they can do things like how if you beat the place a bunch of times, you can skip to the end boss or do bosses you just want to do.

There will be three different difficulty tiers. Raid finder will be the same, with some flex scaling to make it easier. Normal will be what flex mode is today, both in difficulty and philosophy. If you are a normal guild today, you will want to do heroic content in WoD--it will also be flex. If you are a hardcore guild, you will play in mythic where it isn't flexible and it is 20 player.

This stops the 10 vs 25-man issues that plagued everyone; mythic is the new cutting edge solution.

Each difficulty has a separate lockout, this way people can play with friends. You can no longer switch difficulties in a raid.

From day one, raids will be across realms. You can play with your friends anywhere, whenever. This is all about being flexible.

These are loot based lockouts, too! You can't loot a boss again, but if you wanted to keep raiding, you can help your friends out.

Traditional loot for normal and heroic, with drops changing based on numbers of people. You will get higher percentages for extra drops the more players you have.

Difficulty will be the same way: you will have higher percentages to get more of a mechanic if you have higher people, but it's not guaranteed.

Quests

Key storylines will be called to by the quest tracker.

There will be a lot more optional content and it will be labeled as such: players can follow the main storyline or they can branch off. This makes the world feel less linear. There will no longer be a magic breadcrumb quest that makes hubs unlock.

There will be a lot more dynamic events and treasures like the Timeless Isle. You'll see multistage events, wandering raid bosses, and other challenges to make it feel a lot more engaging.

Treasures are rewards for exploring the world. The idea is that if you find a hidden path, you'll want to walk up it and explore because they'll hide things there. For example, in Frostfire, you might run into a bird's nest that has a gem that you can loot for a reward. You might find a caravan that's stuck and if you kill them, you get a treasure chest.

The idea is basically how there used to be treasure chests around the world--something surprising and fun to justify your exploration.

There will be a chance at epic/rare rewards--you won't just get greens from quests.

There's a lot of UI updates.

They want max level world content to be more than ever before. Little to any of it will be daily quests--they heard everyone's pleas.

Long-term epic storylines, free-form content, and environmental gameplay will be what quests offer at level 100.

Large buildings: barracks, infirmary, armory, stable, academy, mage tower. These are the Warcraft III buildings and they are the most important. Barracks increases followers you can have, etc. In a way this is literally the macro side of Warcraft III put into a MMORPG.

There will be blueprints all over the world. Quest rewards, random zone drops. These will teach you how to build new buildings!

You will be able to change specializations probably once a day. These are buffs for getting to max rank.

Every time the garrison grows, it gets new stats--like it might get 10%->15% increase in gathering.

To level up your garrison, you need to fill all the plots. Plots come in three sizes like small, medium, and large.

There will be so many missions. Followers might be better at missions than other followers--one might have orcbane, a trait which makes him stronger against orcs. So running a dungeon with him will create an extra bonus.

It's important to note that you can actually walk throughout your garrison. This isn't just a map--it's real. You can watch your followers mine if you really want to.

Systems

Warlords is about removing the barrier between playing with friends. They feel they lost sight of this due to the random matchmaking and WoD is about returning to the game and the social areas.

Ideally raid finder would be a last resort--when you're between friends. Raid finder should be tourist mode, but you'll really want to normal raid (especially since it's the difficulty Flex used to be).

There will be a new group finder that's better than what they have already.

Stacking the Deck will be bonus valor if you queue with friends. Matchmade groups that re-queue will count as friends.

Items

There will be more enchants, but fewer items can be enchanted. They should be a BONUS, not a REQUIREMENT. They want it to be like how you would get Crusader for a weapon back in the day, not a requirement to immediately pick one up.

Fewer items will have gem sockets, but gems will be more powerful and exciting.

Primary stats... your gear changes when you change spec. If you have leggings on for your holy set, they will switch to strength when you go to ret. This is huge.

Simplify everything: armor for tanks, spirit for healers. This makes up for losing things like parry and dodge on items.

There will be tertiary stats: sometimes you can get extra stats for free, they don't count as a budget. For example: Sturdiness (no durability), speed (movement speed will stack), cleave (increased AoE damage).

Item squish: it's baaaaaack. They felt 400k DPS was a little excessive and confusing, so it's back to yesteryear.

Q&A

Do you know how to switch from 10-man to 25-man? A lot of guilds did 10-man heroic raiding.We recognize that this will be hard for the current 10-man heroic guilds. At least we have the flexible raiding so you can keep growing with say, a 12-man raid group. We hope that this will help.

The player experience: how will you manage the suspension of disbelief when you have a garrison or a random event that keeps repeating when you want your world to be living and breathing? If you just wait a while, they will keep happening.Can you clarify--how are they related?

For example, if you have a garrison it's phased, right? So what's the purpose of having a garrison if there's no consequences in the world? For example, why have a fortress if players can't attack it?I can see interactions with garrisons coming. I think building a base for the sake of building a base is actually really cool. Players will have a great experience, it doesn't need to be attacked or have player interaction to be cool. You also have to realize that 99.9% of the world is still going to be public, your garrison won't just break immersion by being phased; they are in predefined locations in a zone. There's also some new tech that will work better than the farm, you will be able to see other people's garrisons. Our plan is that if you're a thousand miles away from your garrison, if your mage tower is super big, you could see it across the zone!

You want more friends to work together, but where is the love for the guilds man? WILL YOU BRING BACK HAVE GROUP, WILL TRAVEL!?We're hoping friends are guildmates--if you group with guildmates you still get your bonuses. You also get to have flex raiding and different difficulties, so more guilds can raid and hang out.

OK, two expansions ago you gave us a bunch of perks. Now we have NOTHING!Yeah, it's one of those systems we felt accomplished what we needed it accomplish. We don't get more out of it by just adding perks for the sake of adding perks.

Flexible caps at 25-man right now. But in Warlords, flex is the norm and mythic is weirdly 20 people. In that context, why not make it 30? 40? People want 40-man raids back, why can't they have them?There's a limit where we feel like scaling and difficulties can happen with more people. That said, we do see that 30 people could be a possibility. There aren't plans, but we'll consider exploring it.

What's the status on character scaling for 5-mans and old raids?Exploring it. Not sure how to do it correctly. We have the ability to scale item down. We're exploring how to scale players' levels down. Still working on it a lot though, once happy with it, we'll talk about it and release it. We're definitely intrigued by this, we want people to explore old content and have it be relevant at some time since there are newer players who never saw old content and should be able to see it like it was meant to be seen.

Are followers actually doing content for you, like the actual raids that are current?Nope! Garrison specific just for the followers.

Hi, I'm a former top druid from Mal'ganis. It feels like you're taking away our content. We did 10-man heroics...Inevitably we'll have to rearrange. It's towards the long-term health of progression raiding, it's about delivering a better experience. We realize that we can't have a good mechanic sometimes that scales from 10 to 25-man. This will let us make these mechanics just for 20 man mythic, making our competitive raiding scene much smoother and more successful.

Warlords of Draenor Demo

The Alliance starts in the Temple of Karabor in Shadowmoon Valley--Outland players know it as The Black Temple.

Alliance players aid Prophet Velen in driving back the Blackrock orcs that are trying to take over the temple.

The Horde starts at Frostwolf Ridge, fighting back the Bladespire Orcs. Durotan and Thrall get to work together leading the mission!

Several races have their new character models in--their animations look amazing.

The item squish was visible on the demo--BlizzCon Noodle soup gave a 28 stat buff, down from noodle soup giving 250 on live.

You can now select favorite mounts and summon a random favorite mount!

Several interesting UI improvements--the Quest and Map UI is now rolled into one display panel, and when you move with the map open, it stays open but grows fainter!

You can sort quest tracking by proximity, high difficulty, low difficulty, and manually. You can also now display achievement tracking, completed quests, and data for remote zones.

Warlords of Draenor UI Improvements

Blizzard

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor will bring with it a plethora of new user interface (UI) improvements, from improved quest tracking to a better inventory system to new ways of storing heirlooms and toys.

Quest Log

For the next expansion, we're updating the quest UI to make it easier to know just where to go and what to do. The quest log will now be organized to show which quests fall into main-story-arc quests and which are side quests so you won’t have to worry about missing out on important story elements before moving onto the next area. Keep in mind there may still be some surprises along the way, and not everything will be listed—we don't want your quest log to spoil all the fun!

Inventory System

We’re making a number of improvements to the inventory system and adding features to remove some of the clutter.

Quest Items: Quest items will no longer occupy space in your inventory, and will instead be moved to the Quest UI.

Sortable Bags: Soon, there will be no more browsing through dozens of icons trying to locate the item you’re looking for. Items you collect or earn will instead go into the bag you designate for those items.

Bags can be designated for particular types of items such as armor, consumables, gray items, etc.

In addition, borders of item icons will be colored indicate item quality, and gray items (that can be safely sold to a vendor) will have a gold coin icon.

Craft Directly from the Bank: Craft or enchant directly from materials in your bank. There’s no need to withdraw the materials, craft or enchant the item, and then deposit the materials back at the bank.

Collections: Collections provide account-wide tracking for heirlooms and toys—more on that below.

Collections

Heirlooms and fun toy items accumulated over the course of your travels will now reside in the Collections system, so they'll no longer take up valuable inventory space. Once obtained, the item will be accessible by all characters on the account. Want to complete the collection? Like the Mount and Pet Journals, items that have not been unlocked will show information on how the item can be obtained. The Collections system is broken down into two main parts:

Heirlooms

Heirlooms are now truly cross-realm and account-bound. All characters on the account (new and old) will be able to summon the heirlooms that have been unlocked straight into their inventories!

Toy Box

You’ll now be able to collect all of your favorite toys and fun items without the guilt of having to delete them for additional inventory space. Puntable Marmot, I’m looking at you.

Warlords of Draenor Information

The new level cap will be 100 and players will get a free level 90 to allow them to skip prior content upon purchasing the expansion.

Blizzard's answer to player housing will be Garrisons. Have you ever played Warcraft III? Imagine having your own base...in World of Warcraft! Garrisons will be a player's home base and they are completely customized.Garrisons will have several buildings you can build in them; you can't have them all, so choose carefully! Some example buildings would be an infirmary, a pet building where you can breed vanity pets, an inn to recruit more followers, and so on.

Buildings will progress in levels--this changes both the benefits they offer as well as their physical appearance.

Speaking of appearances, both the Horde and Alliance will get unique building exteriors.

Garrisons can be built all over the world and they will be visible to players through intense, complex phasing. Your garrison will truly be a part of Draenor.

Garrisons will have your own personal army. Your followers will vary in quality level, much like vanity pets. They will also have specializations; some could be a healer others could be miners.

Your followers can be sent on missions or do basic tasks. For example, maybe you send them on a week long raid. After a week is over, they come back with the spoils to share with their fearless leader!

Leveling your followers will give you minimal access to professions you don't have like Skinning for example.

There will be 7 new zones and each one is extremely atmospheric.

The Horde capital is Bladespire Fortress in Frostridge Valley.

The Alliance capital is Karabor in Shadowmoon Valley.

Item squish is happening but item levels will not change.Legendaries are here to stay and Blizzard is happy with how Mists of Pandaria's questline worked out.

Comments

Comment by tokimekichika

Honeslty, i agree with blizz cause its a new good path to get legendaries.Its all on your own (but rng sometimes made us insane)

Comment by Sateeva

on 2013-11-09T13:37:34-06:00

So excited! o3o

Comment by Nymrohd

on 2013-11-09T13:38:16-06:00

I actually hope we get both a legendary for all as well as legendaries that are more class restricted.

Comment by NaroDekk

on 2013-11-09T13:38:31-06:00

In opposition to actual farm in Pandaria, we should be able to invite friends in our own Garrison, and I must admit that's a great idea.

Comment by karachu

on 2013-11-09T13:38:33-06:00

rad prize

Comment by Kiyah

on 2013-11-09T13:40:12-06:00

I didn't think I would enjoy the player housing coming to WoW, but the more I hear about Garrisons the more excited I am!

Comment by 25roses

on 2013-11-09T13:41:07-06:00

So excited about the new expansion. Garrisons sound like a lot of fun. Looking forward to many many many hours of serious fun.

Comment by Jhazkresh

on 2013-11-09T13:41:26-06:00

Item squish is happening. Outstanding. I'm -so- glad to hear that.

Comment by Leviatharan

on 2013-11-09T13:42:23-06:00

"Legendaries are here to stay and Blizzard is happy with how Mists of Pandaria's questline worked out."

So about transmogrification then...

Comment by Teminar

on 2013-11-09T13:42:26-06:00

I am liking some of these new features that they are adding! The only thing so far I am kind of iffy on is the new raid set up. I know a lot of guilds that struggle to get and keep a core 10 man group together as gar as when it comes to getting progression. Guilds like that will definitely have even more problems with the new 20 man set up. I guess only time will tell how well that is going to work out. Aside from that so far I like what I am seeing! Keep up the good work :)

Comment by Deathfury

on 2013-11-09T13:42:35-06:00

I wonder what legendary item we'll get in WoD.

Comment by thegalaxygoddess

on 2013-11-09T13:42:44-06:00

You know, blizz said ages ago that they wouldn't be doing houses because they just didn't have the power, and then at one point is was because they had too many people playing for the servers to support housing. I'm eager to see where this is going, but at the same time reluctant that it wouldn't be as well done as say another game.

Comment by NIfelvind

on 2013-11-09T13:43:19-06:00

WoD is one of their best expansion

Comment by Camus666

on 2013-11-09T13:44:46-06:00

"Item squish is happening" and i am happy about it, this will help to decrease the weight on the CPU for some mid/low tier computers

Comment by bitterantonym

on 2013-11-09T13:46:50-06:00

It's going to feel kind of weird leveling up ten levels again, after adjusting to only five per expansion lately.

Comment by WoWlower

on 2013-11-09T13:47:14-06:00

This is very nice, I can't wait for it to release!

Comment by DatRandomGuy

on 2013-11-09T13:47:53-06:00

I cannot WAIT to return to outlands, I want to crush the Iron Horde already!

Comment by Veloxi

on 2013-11-09T13:49:23-06:00

Am I the only one who doesn't know how to feel about the garrisons? I know people have wanted them for a really long time but it feels really "RTS"-y to me. Either way, the new models make me very happy! As a mainly Alliance player, the orcs look great, just like from the cinematic.

Comment by Prepodobna

on 2013-11-09T13:50:58-06:00

This looks amazing, let's hope it will be as it looks. Can't wait!

Comment by southernfae

on 2013-11-09T13:51:49-06:00

can't wait to get to outlands here either, its one of my favorite lands,look forward to see what they've done there!